Shake-up planned for death certificates

Bereaved families could save money under plans to change the way deaths are certified, it has been announced.

The Scottish Government published a Bill to scrap the 147 cremation fee and give greater scrutiny to the certification process. A new universal fee of about 30 would be used to cover burial and cremations, if approved by MSPs.

The Certification of Death (Scotland) Bill also aims to improve the "quality and accuracy" of death forms.

Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said changes to fees would save families up to 3.6 million a year across the country.

"The proposed changes will offer a service that is better quality and better value for money," she added.

The changes were prompted by an agreement in 2005 that Scotland's burial and cremation legislation needed to be brought up to date.

Explanatory notes with the Bill said much of the law is over 100 years old and "did not reflect 21st-century life".

The Bill also sets out plans for a team of medical reviewers to scrutinise random samples of deaths in annual checks.

Chief Medical Officer Harry Burns said: "This Bill removes historical differences between cremation and burial introduced at a time when medicine was less advanced.

"In addition, this Bill provides us with a new and modern approach to scrutiny of death."

There were 53,856 deaths in Scotland last year, with around 60 per cent of people being cremated and 40 per cent buried, the government said.

Parts relating to death certification were prioritised from a wider look at burial and cremation.

Consideration is yet to be given to proposals to stack bodies in graves because of a shortage of burial plots.

Dr George Fernie, chair of the BMA's forensic medicine committee and member of the BMA's Scottish Council, said: "The BMA welcomes this planned overhaul of the existing death certification systems which have become outdated.

"The government's proposals provide a foundation on which to develop a modernised service but it essential that this has sufficient resource to ensure the new system has effective medical support.

"The new processes detailed in the Bill support measures to improve clinical governance and will act as a means to improve the quality and accuracy of certification as well as enhancing the scrutiny of death certification."